After coaching youth sports for 25 years, Dennis Brown was looking for a new way to give back to his community. He found it by using an old skill. Garvin Thomas reports.
For a quarter century, Dennis Brown was a youth football and baseball coach in the East Bay. Brown loved working with the children – both his own and thousands of others – and viewed it as his way of giving back to his community, something that was important to Brown.
A few years ago, however, Brown retired from coaching and needed a new way to give back. He found it by utilizing an old skill.
Years ago, Brown had worked for a fire and water restoration company.
“We got everything that we could salvage,” Brown said. “I happened to be in the shoe section.”
He got very good at taking shoes that were damaged and restoring them to an almost-new condition.
So, when one day this past winter Brown saw a man with tattered shoes, he saw an opportunity.
“I see this guy, he's pushing a cart. Shoes are really bad,” Dennis said. “It was freezing, so I knew his feet were freezing.”
Feeling compelled to help, Brown used his old skills and repaired some old, worn shoes of his.
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“When I handed him shoes and (saw) how happy he was … I said, ‘I got to do more of this,’” Brown said.
Brown put out word on social media that he was accepting donations of old shoes. Hundreds of shoes soon filled his Fremont home. Brown then spent countless hours cleaning, reshaping, and sometimes repainting the shoes until they looked almost new.
Brown then finds local organizations he can work with to deliver the shoes to those who may need them.
“These shoes are expensive, but they're really beat up. I can bring them back just to see the smile on the kids' faces,” Brown said.
Recently, Brown visited Hayward’s Community Resources for Independent Living to provide shoes to adults with developmental disabilities. For him, each shoe tells a unique story, and his new passion involves giving each story a second chance at a happy ending.
